ROLLER COTTON GIN AT LAST

By

C. E. HAYES

OR years all cotton men, the saw gins materially damage the fiber.

whether growers, ginners or But the roller gins in use, working by manufacturers, have recog- reciprocating motion, have a very small nized that a radical improve- capacity, about 40 to 50 pounds per hour

ment was necessary in the as compared with the saw gins which present method of ginning cotton. The turn out from 400 :0 500 pounds of lint enormous loss in wasteful ginning meth- per hour. Also the roller gins in use ods, estimated as amounting to $40,000,- have only been adapted to the ginning 000 on each year's crop, could be saved of the very longest varieties of cotton, for the mills of this country, with the like Sea Island and Egyptians, and not use of a perfect gin. Roller gins have much success was achieved with them in been recognized for years as the proper the ginning of short staple or upland gins to use, delivering the cotton fiber in cotton which comprises ninety-nine per its full length, uncut and unbroken, while cent of the cotton crop in this country.

MAGNIFIED COTTON FIBERS SHOWING CUTS AND

INJURY FROM SAW GINNING. For years inventors have been working to improve the capacity of the roller gin, knowing that when the quantity of output would equal the saw gin, the latter would die out.

Some years ago Charles J. McPherson of South Framingham, Mass., became interested in the improvement of cotton ginning and as a result of his great saving to him in the preliminary experiments invented what he calls the processes in the mill, besides making a rotary comb roller gin. This gin will stronger yarn. As a result roller gin soon be in the market in competition with cotton sells from one-half to three cents the saw gin.

per pound more than saw gin cotton. The new gin uses a rotary process The gin consists of two sets of double which gives it a rapid ginning action and rolls, the rolls of each set revolving in opa great capacity, turning out from 400 to posite directions. One of these is a gin500 pounds of short staple cotton per ning roll, and is covered with some soft hour while the fiber is uninjured and material having a gentle friction—usually the quality of the lint perfect. Many walrus hide—which will thus not only points of superiority are claimed for this not injure the fiber, but likewise should new gin over the saw gin. Among be free from the danger of heating exthem is the saving in fire losses which cessively. The other roll is a combing now occur in saw ginneries through the roll and consists of a shaft on which are action of the rapidly revolving saws en- set spirally two pointed soft metal disks. countering pebbles or small particles of The lint on the seed is caught by the hard metals which are frequently brought ginning roll and drawn inside a polished to the ginneries in the seed cotton. steel plate or blade against which the Sparks are flashed as a result and fires ginning roll revolves. This action holds ensue, thus causing insurance rates on the seed firmly against the dull edge of ginneries to be very high. The action of the blade and it is combed from the lint the rolls in the rotary gin is to smother by the points of the rapidly revolving the fire should one start in the gin. Re- disks. After being detached by the comb peated tests having been made to demon- roll, the seeds are forced through a grate -strate this fact. There is no danger underneath by the rotary action of the whatever to operators of the new roller comb roll, and the lint, now free, is gin. Thousands of employes in Southern blown by means of a suction fan to a ginneries are maimed or less seriously in- condenser in the rear of the gin. The jured each year by saw gins.

simplicity and efficiency of the process The new gin has ginned wet cotton are apparent at a glance.

TWO ELEVATORS IN A

ONE SHAFT

By

H. G. HUNTING

NORTYMENOVADA SPOMNON

F you have ridden up and down in the
elevators of the big buildings of Chicago,
you are more likely to feel that too little,
rather than too much, space is given to

elevators. Usually they are used to ca-
pacity. With this fact perfectly clear in his
view, however, Jarvis Hunt, designer of big
buildings, has made the astonishing announce-
ment that twice too much space is used by the
lifts, because—now, don't laugh—because two
elevators can just as well run in one shaft as
not.

A few days ago, a group of Chicago capitalists paid $85,000 a front foot for a piece of State Street real estate. That means that, for a strip of ground one foot wide and running back one hundred feet to the alley, they gave cheerfully, not to say with alacrity, a sum that would make a snug little competence, at least, for most men.

Of course, they did not buy one strip alone. They bought several, side by side. Then they dug still deeper into their capacious pockets and brought forth a million or so and put up a building of magnitude and figured the value of floor-space as a basis for rentals. And the floor-space was valuable. It was worth enough to pay up-keep, interest and profit on that $85,000 per front foot and on the million or so invested in the building.

Floor space in that building rents for about five dollars a square foot per month, or say eighty dollars for an office twelve by sixteen feet. With twenty floors, each one hundred by one hundred feet inside measure, such a building would have two hundred thousand feet of floor space. And two hundred thousand feet at five dollars a foot per month, would make a very pretty income on investment. But –

The space doesn't all rent. There must be halls and walls. There must be stairways. There must be closets, janitors' rooms, rooms for control-stations for various apparatus, washrooms. There must be a light-shaft.

B

There must be air spaces and space for pipings
for water and sewer and steam, and wiring for
electric service. Lastly—but not least, by any
means—there must be space for elevators.

When you come to count it all up, it is
costly space that is given to all these things.
It keeps the profits down—somewhat, though
it is still popularly believed to be a profitable
investment, this building and renting of big
skyscrapers. But suppose that each elevator
in such a building takes a space six by seven
feet, including its running space. That's forty-
two square feet out of each floor for each ele-
vator. Suppose it requires ten elevators to
serve the building. Ten elevators would sub-
tract ten times forty-two feet for each of
twenty floors, or 8,400 square feet, in all, from
the rentable floor space of the building. At
five dollars-oh, well, it is easy enough to
figure it. That's $504,0C0 a year in floor space
given up to elevators. That's quite a sum.

The builders of the big skyscraper on State
Street are giving up $504,000 every year for
the purpose of lifting people in and out of the
rentable floor-space. You may be quite sure
that they have figured rather carefully about
the necessities of the case before they have
consented to any such thing. But a certain
Chicago architect has come forward and pro-
claims that they are throwing away just one-
half of that big sum. Literally they are throw-
ing it away—for it isn't going to anybody-
it isn't doing anybody any good. It simply
isn't coming in when it should be. Why?
Because too much space is given to elevators.

Two elevators in one shaft! How? Well,
of course, they can't be side by side, so they
must be one over the other. And the plan is
“so simple that it's a wonder nobody thought
of it before,” just as is every other useful idea
that crops into man's head after years of blun-
dering blindness.

There are two types of elevators in common
use now in the great buildings. One is the
kind that is lifted by cables—the other is the
sort that is pushed up by a plunger. Mr. Hunt
means to put a cable-lift elevator in the shaft,
to start at the first floor and run “express,"
without a stop below the tenth floor, serving
the floors above the latter point. Beneath that
elevator, he will put another to start at the
basement and be pushed up by its plunger and X
run “local” to the tenth floor and back, serving
all floors below the tenth. Between the two
cars he puts a safety device to prevent possi-
bility of collision and—there you are. It is
simple to arrange the schedule so that the two

cars can serve their respective floors without
interfering with each other.

While the cable-lifted car is rising from the
first to the tenth floor, the plunger car will be
taking on its load for the floors below the
tenth. While the plunger car is delivering and
receiving passengers between the first and the
tenth floors, the cable car will be doing its
work between the tenth and twentieth. It
requires just about as much time to serve one
floor as another, and in all well regulated
buildings a perfect schedule is adhered to, so
that there will be nothing new in this require-
ment. There is every reason to believe that
the new plan will work and work well—to the
saving of about half of that $504,000 in the
State Street building, and considerably more
than that amount in some of the Chicago
buildings where fifteen or twenty elevators are
required to serve twenty floors.

Suppose there are twenty buildings in Chicago that can save as much as that, by such a change of elevator methods—suppose there are twenty cities that have ten buildings each that follow suit—suppose there are a hundred more that have from two to five—and suppose that half the lower buildings, to say nothing of the higher ones can adopt adaptations of the plan? That leaves nothing at all to suppose about the results in savings, lower rents and greater profits, does it? And it's one more proof that we haven't been half so clever as we thought we were in the matter of economies. If all the inventors were to turn their attention to showing us where we Americans are wasters, as the efficiency engineers are showing the railroads, our much inflated conceit would look like a toy-balloon that is busted.